#7 Dragon on a Pedestal by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [ANTHONY, PIERS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Xanth (Imaginary place), Fantasy - General, Fiction - Fantasy, General, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy - Series
ISBN: 9780345418555
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1997-06-23T05:00:00+00:00

Hugo threw another fruit—this time an overripe water melon. It was too heavy for him to heave high, so it splatted on the giant's hot toe, cooling it.

Ivy realized that they weren't making much progress. "Think of something, Hugo!" she cried. "You're smart!"

"I am?" Hugo still found this hard to believe, especially in the morning. But he discovered he was smarter than he had supposed, and he did think of something. "Cherries!" he cried. After all, they had worked pretty well to disrupt Fracto, the bad cloud, when the three children were fleeing it.

He started heaving cherries, and they exploded all around the giant with fancy red booms. But they were too small to have much effect on a target of this size.

"A pineapple!" Hugo said. It, too, had proved to be an effective fruit in the past, with some sweet results. He heaved one. This was considerably more powerful, and the explosion set the giant's animal skin on fire. The conflagration was closer to the pain center, and the nerve channels had already been reamed out, so the smell of roasting meat hardly got started before the new roar shook the cave. The giant danced about, smashing out the flames with fist and club. In the course of this activity, the monster bent down. For a moment his eye hovered near the dragon.

Stanley shot out a blast of steam that bathed the eye.

"Owwwgh!" the giant cried, clapping his hands to his face as the club dropped to the floor. "Ungh, smarts!"

"Now we can go!" Hugo cried happily. "Stanley blinded

him!"

"Oh!" Ivy exclaimed. She paused to peer up at the tears squeezing out between the monster's fingers. "Poor thing!"

"Hey, we gotta go!" Hugo said. "Before he starts blocking

off the door again!"

"But his eye!" she said. She had sympathy for anyone who cried for any reason. Once she had gotten dust in her eye, and it had teared something awful. "Suppose it doesn't get better?" "So what? Who cares what happens to a mean old monster?" Her lip firmed rebelliously. "/ care! I didn't really want to

hurt him!"

Hugo exchanged a look of bafflement tinged with disgust with the dragon. They found this feminine sensitivity as be wildering as her Sorceress talent. "You want to help the mon ster?"

"Well, I guess if he needs it, "Ivy said. "Till his eye gets

better, maybe."

"And then he'll eat us!" Hugo said.

Ivy couldn't definitely refute that, so she ignored it. She called to the giant, who was now standing silently, blinking his sore eye, from which huge tears were flowing. "Does it hurt bad, giant? I'm sorry."

The giant seemed as surprised as Hugo and Stanley had been. "Me? You talk to me?"

"You see any other gross, awful, oneeyed, hairy giants in here?" Hugo inquired sarcastically.

"I see nothing at moment," the giant said, rubbing his orb with a callused fist.

"Don't do that!" Ivy cried, remembering admonitions by her mother. "You'll get dirt in it and make it worse!"

The giant stopped immediately. It seemed he was responsive to the voice of female authority.

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